Bedtime Story

I would like to tell you a little story. This goes out to all those bleeding heart hippies out there who sympathize with the rebellion.

Once there was a star called Trime around which circled three habitable worlds. In the founding days of the Old Republic the Trimean worlds had enjoyed great prosperity as centres of learning and artistic innovation, but they fell into ruin over a centuries-long battle concerning where the Royal House of Trime should summer.

When the Prince of Yor moved the House to sit on Trime Secondae after being disgusted by the perceived commercial excesses of Trime Primae, Trime Tertiae launched a trade war against both worlds accusing them of a cultural conspiracy to rob them of their own rightful dignity in the system, and sought to forcibly move the royals in the name of defending the shared Trimean heritage. The journalists had a field day, and were subsequently disappeared in the night by secret police. Things went from bad to worse.

The Royal House itself was fractured, with one faction of nobles pitted against another in bloody Moebius-strips of double-dipped connivance. They broke ancient treaties by putting the primitives to work in mines, stoking the fires of their war engines. There were revolts, strikes, slaughters.

A long line of Old Republic ambassadors followed by an equally long line of Imperial negotiators had treated with the Trimean Councils, but any solution was ultimately stymied by a question of dividing that which was indivisible: the seat of the Crown on Calendar Day.

So my master sent me to the Trime System. This is going back a ways now, maybe fourteen years. At any rate, I listened to the councillors on each world, and met with the sheriffs of the guerilla armies. I even spoke briefly with the chief of a clan of warrior primitives -- little pink things with googly eyes and prehensile tails.

What crystallized the situation for me was something the Duke of Foulbash said, bringing his brown fist down on the table: "Lord Vader, what is at stake here is a millennium of tradition! That is the heart of this matter."

The Duke was right. I told him so. Then I assassinated the entire royal family, down to the last forgotten bastard.

And do you know what? The Trime System is a leading commercial concern in the sector today. They grieved but they got over it. Once liberated from the yoke of an insoluble, deeply emotional dilemma the people of the Trimean worlds were free to build new bonds, to establish vibrant new institutions, and to create new traditions.

Question: do you want a moment of agony, or an entire history of ache?

That is the spirit that underlies the New Order. Understand this, and live in peace.